He was Edmond Dantes

Major spoilers aho; fairly warned be ye.

Gemini Rue, as it turns out, didn't have a whole lot more to it than those few hours I mentioned, but that's okay. I've played longer games that weren't even half as good. I played through most of Fallout 2, and I couldn't even finish the damn thing. Length doesn't mean a whole lot. Most of my favourite games over the past few years have just been tiny experimental no-budget games from one guy in his basement anyway.

So, anyway, I really liked it. Quite a lot. The writing was, well. The writing. It's not the best, but it's hardly bad, either. The plot is essentially Blade Runner, mixed in with a bit of amnesiac prisoner in a shady government institution. The place wipes the memory of criminals and undesirables, then builds them new memories, and sends them back out into the universe to be productive members of society.

Which touches on a few interesting concepts as it goes. Personality is determined, at least in part, by your memories, your experiences, environmental factors and all that, so who are you without it? Unfortunately, it got a bit ham handed at some points. This sort of underlying theme could have worked really well with a soft, subtle touch. It's a contemplative sort of thing, so it'd match up well with contemplative sort of characters.

Not to say it felt ham handed all over. The ending, in particular, was perfect. They bring up questions, re who you are without memories, but they don't answer them. That's the best thing a game can do, without a doubt. The questions are there for me to answer, not the game.

I mean, just look at morality in games. Take Fable. You can be Jesus, or you can be Satan. Not only that, but the game tells you when you've dome something bad, or good. Morals aren't universal. By their very definition, they cannot be. Even then, different perceptions of different situations lead to different conclusions. You can't ever effectively wrap this sort of thing up in a neat and tidy two option bundle.

To take one example - Twinblade. You have to go to a bandit camp and fight your way to the boss, because destiny save kingdom rescue sister defeat evil chosen hero. So you get there, and he's not exactly disposed to recieving guests, so he attacks you. I'm not sure if the game expected me to be surprised that the evil bandit lord was not in fact an awesome guy, but whatever. You get him down to x health, and then he's kneeling on the ground defeated. He says something to the effect of "I've lost all respect I had from the boys. If you let me live, what kind of a life is this?"

Which could have been a really interesting decision. Maybe I'm feeling vengeful because he tried to kill me, so I'll let him live on in suffering? Maybe I'll let him go so he can build a better life? Maybe I'll let him live because I don't care? Because too much blood has been shed on his behalf already? Take him to the local guards, possibly? Or I could kill him because it's the just thing to do. Execute him for his crimes. Although, I'm not a judge. Is it really my responsibility to decide who lives and who dies, and why? Or is it my duty as an upstanding citizen of this society to uphold the values that this society deems as important, no matter the cost? Although, is imposing my own moral system on other people inherently immoral?

Oh, sorry, this is fable. Killing is bad, so you get bad points. Letting him live is good, so you get good points. Sorry, I was actually getting interested in things there. I have to remember that this is a game about hitting bad guys with your sword and getting orbs of xp.

I have my own morals. Everybody does. I'm in favour of abortion. Maybe you think it's murder. I'd disagree, of course, but there isn't really a definitive answer to this sort of thing. There's no x+x=y. Which is why these moral systems don't work. They always have to slot a y in there. My y is not going to be the game's y. Yours probably won't be, either. Because there's not just the y, there's the reasoning behing y. Look at all that about Twinblade. There was only two conclusions, live or die, but just see how many thoughts I had. Then Fable just decided KILLING IS BAD. So, yeah.

Leaving questions unanswered is perfect. Just look at Planescape. What can change the nature of a man? If there had have been a "right" answer in the game, the entire thing would have been ruined. Because there isn't a right answer. Just your answer. What was my answer? Love can change a man. That was what I took away from the game, and I felt richer for it, because it was my answer. I came to this conclusion, not the game. The game presented me with x+x=? and I filled in y.

Which isn't to say that Gemini Rue was inconclusive. It was a satisfying ending, and they got it just right. The characters were, well, it occurs to me that I've yet to explain the characters.

So, there's two playable characters. Well, sort of, but I'll get to that later. You've got your noir future cop in neo-metropolis. Which, I might add, has a brilliant setting. It's on a planet that's constantly raining. Come on, that's brilliant, I was smiling like a loon when they said that.

Anyway, he's gritty and hardboiled and all that. He's dropped in from unspecified "off world" to track down an old war buddy. I alway enjoy ex-army characters. It's a good way to immediately build up a little bit of interest. Why did they sign up? Were they conscritped? Did they try to run away? Why did they leave? Did they lose? Were they discharged? What went down? In one little line or two, they've pretty much got me invested in this character as a person.

Then you've got your amnesiac patient in the shady government facility. Stock standard stuff, really. Scientist types talking to you over loudspeakers. Weird tests. White, sterile chambers. Although, I was glad that you weren't the only patient. I was expecting the dull, tired "something went wrong with each of the patinets except you! I guess you're special, or some shit? Let's find out why!" trope. There being other patients around led to a lot of really interesting developments. Being alone doesn't really work very well in most games, unless they're all about the whole isolation thing. Minecraft sort of pulled that off, if you squinted a bit.

It's pretty average stuff at this point. Walk around talking to people, collecting information, breaking and entering, you know. The usual. Which is great, really. This sort of thing works well. This isn't a part of the game that needs anything changed.

Which isn't to say that the game didn't pull out any aces when it came to mechanics. The action scenes were intense. It wasn't USE GUN ON MAN. It was real time cover-based combat. I know that that's pretty much about as special as a cd player in a car these days, but this is an adventure game, not a third person shooter. Can you imagine real time gun fights in, say, Grim Fandango? Or The Dig? Yeah. Exactly.

I mean, those sections are just keyboard control. Left and right to duck out of cover either way. W to change target, space to shoot. Nothing that's going to innovate games forever, but it was a really effective touch that made things a lot more intense than they would have been otherwise.

There's also some similar mechanics with crates in the game. You can drag them left and right and then climb on them to reach stuff. Again, really simple mechanic, but not one you expect in this sort of game. It's a really small kind of thing, yeah. Moving crates isn't really a big deal. I get that. We were moving crates twenty years ago - but, just like the real time gun fights, it's not the sort of thing you expect in a point and click adventure game. It's a very welcome mechanic.

At one point in the game, you can switch between both the noir cop and the amnesiac at will. Up until this point, it was more along the lines of make progress in the game, then you switch to the other guy. This was fantastic. I loved this feature. If I got stuck with one guy, I could just start playing as the other one. The part about adventure games that I don't like is the part where sometimes, I'm just sitting there thinking. It's not the thinking I dislike, it's that I'm doing nothing in the game. My character's just standing dead still, and I'm going "wait what if I pull this lever first... oh, no, shit, I need to get here first, and if I go there I can't get back here..."

I like that part of adventure games. It's what sets them apart from regular old puzzle games. Take Portal. I didn't like portal. I played it, I beat it, I didn't like it. It was all about one mechanic, which I dislike. Would you rather eat a bag of flour, or a cake? You see what I mean. I prefer games that combine different elements and come up with something special. Portal was a puzzle game where you have a hundred puzzles and one solution. I would much prefer a game with one puzzle and a hundred solutions.

That's my point there. The difficulty in Portal usually isn't figuring out what to do, it's executing the solution. Which seems counter-intuitive, to me. The enjoyment factor in an adventure game is "oh! Hey! I figured out what to do! All on my own! I'm awesome. I am the best at everything forever." It's a good feeling, and I like solving these things. I like it that the game hasn't already given me the answer.

In games like Portal, I've already figured out what I have to do. I need to shoot a portal here, and a portal there. The difficulty, for me, was in actually getting through both the portals. I'd already solved the puzzle. I already knew exactly how it works, and exactly what to do, but I wasn't done yet. The game wanted to dick me around with stupid physics crap. So my enjoyment from figuring out the puzzle is completely nullified by the fact that I'm still flailing through the room, wildly leaping from one portal to another. That's not enjoyable for me. That is the opposite. The game is detracting from my enjoyment by forcing me to endure jump puzzles.

So I like the thinking about the puzzles. I like that I don't know what to do. If I don't know what to do, then that's my fault, not the game's. If I know what to do and I can't do it properly because of ambiguous game mechanics, then that's the game's fault.

I don't like the standing around and doing nothing, though. The switching between characters fixed that for me. If I don't know what to do in room x with noir cop, then I can start fooling around in room y with amnesiac - but a small part of my head is still in room x with noir cop. I'm still thinking about how I can pull that lever up there, but still be over here. The only difference is that noir cop isn't standing still staring at nothing. Instead, amnesiac patient is wandering the halls, talking to the other patient.

That wasn't the only reason I loved the character switching, though. Hoho, no. This was clever. This was very, very clever. From about the first ten minutes of the game, it's pretty obvious that noir cop is himself actually a rehabilitated criminal type. That was pretty easy to sleuth. Combined with the, perhaps, a touch derivative setting, I thought I had it all figured out. "Yep, I know all your secrets, game. I'm onto you."

How wrong I was. As it turns out, amnesiac patient and noir cop are the same person at different times. According to noir cop, amnesiac patient was his brother. You later figure out that that was just a fabricated memory implanted at the shady government facility. I was sincerely shocked. Very rarely do games surprise me these days. Combine my healthy streak of cynicism with the fact that I thought I'd already figured the game out, and I was more or less walking across the road with my eyes closed.

Then you throw into the mix the character switching. Because you're switching between the two of them in real time, that kind of throws your mind into thinking that this is the present for both characters. People don't inherently expect crazy time shenanigans, obviously. Especially not when it's reinforced by the game itself that everything is happening at the same time.

Very clever. Mechanically, as I explained above, multiple fronts are an advantage with puzzles. Thematically, that's a perfect diversion. That right there, that it's both mechanically and thematically perfect, is what's important. Usually there's a disconnect between the two in some way. In Fallout 3, I have to go save Dad. Mechanically, because the game wants to give me an excuse to go and do stuff. Thematically, because... I care about Dad? Maybe?

No. I don't, and neither did you. Or anybody. He was just a guy with a beard. So there's a disconnect between the two. It feels a little off. This is what games are about right here. Combinations. They have the power, more than any other medium, to combine a lot of different elements to make something amazing. Yet another reason why I find games like Portal, where they focus on the one mechanic, infinitely disappointing.

It's pretty much game over once you find that out. There's some wrapping the plot up afterwards, but you're close to the end. As amnesiac patient, you try to escape the facility with two of your buddies. One of them gets killed, and you get captured - and you get your memory wiped, again. Your other buddy gets out, and, ends up on the same planet you do as noir cop, and you end up helping each other.

So then you take her with you as you head to the facility to save your non-extant brother. You have with you some pilot guy who you've apparently been working with for about a year, and your ex-army buddy. Of course, what with your memories being fabricated, he isn't your ex-army buddy at all. He's another patient with a grudge against you for melting his face off. I'm not sure if they sent him out to kill you, or to make sure you made it back to the shady facility in one piece, but either way, there he is.

When you manage to get back to shady facility, you end up getting captured. Noir cop gets his memory erased, again. So he pretty much loses his memory of the events of the entire game. Now you take control of noir cop's buddy, that escaped from the facility. Sayuri, I think. You bust out of your cell, and you free the pilot guy too.

Through a series of events, ex-army grudge bearing guy gets taken out by noir cop, noir cop and pilot guy head back to their ship, and Sayuri goes off trying to find the computer database. Apparently the facility keeps a backup of all of the patient's memories. That seemed sort of... unecessary to me. The whole point of this place is to wipe these people clean, make them better. Why keep bad memories on file? It's not like they were going to use them for anything. It's implied that the director went a bit crazy, so I guess that's as good of an excuse as any.

Now, the director. He wasn't great. For one, I think he's wearing a monocle. I mean, really? Seriously? Who thought that was a good idea? Do you want to give him a villain moustache while you're at it? Come on.

I get that a character like this is going to be hard to write, no matter what you do. His only role in the game is pretty much to spout exposition every so often. So, obviously, it wasn't going to be easy to make him anything but a big bag of cliches. Which they... came close to doing. In the intro, noir cop is sitting in the memory wipe machine with the director and two other scientist guys doing stuff to him. The director was getting frustrated. That's good! He was showing emotion! Quelle surprise. He kept getting angry at his two scientist buddies for doing their jobs badly. Hardly huge emotional character development, but it was something approaching a personality, which was fantastic.

Most of the heavy handed dialogue was lumped on the director's shoulders. Which, again, is unfortunate, but I mean, he's Mister Exposition. If anybody had to be a stupid character, at least it was him.

The ending, as I said before, was perfect. Noir cop has had his memory wiped, again, so he doesn't know anything. Pilot guy and Sayuri are talking to one another, and pilot guy poses the question that noir cop isn't noir cop anymore, so why should Sayuri care about him? Who are we without our memories?

Instead of pulling the bullshit card out and answering the question for me, Sayuri did the most fitting thing she could. She said it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who we are without our memories. It doesn't matter if he's the same man he was. All he has is who he is now, for better or for worse, and that's all anybody has. Who they are now.

That's perfect. It's an open ended question, in every way possible. Open ended questions don't lend themselves to Fable style "KILLING PEOPLE IS BAD SO YOU GET BAD POINTS." I am so glad that they didn't supply a definitive answer. That would have more or less ruined a lot of the game for me.

The whole game, then, is about identity. Which is really helped a lot by the fact that there isn't really a protangonist. You keep switching between characters; noir cop, amnesiac, then Sayuri and pilot guy. The game is reinforcing the identity theme by not really giving you a clear character to say "yep, that dude's the hero." Even when you find out noir cop and amnesiac are the same guy, he gets his memory wiped, so that adds even more ambiguity in the mix.

It wasn't perfect. There were a few moments of bullshit. At one point, amnesiac patient is tied up to a pipe, about to be tortured by ex-army buddy - who, at this point, is just another patient. So it's your generic adventure game puzzle. You're tied up, find a way to get out. Your actions in the game are nouns, really. You don't have "use", you have "hand". You don't have "look", you have "eye", and so on with foot and mouth. So, in this situation, I tried using my mouth on the ropes. My hand were tied right next to my head, so I thought "hey, I can bite through those easy." Alas, the game responded by telling me that I didn't need to talk to the ropes.

I would have been okay with the game saying "I tried to bite through them but it didn't work." That would have been fine, but if you're set on giving me "mouth" as an action instead of just "talk", then why assume I'm always going to mean talk when I use it?

The actual solution to this puzzle was that there was a tiny, obscured little shard on the ground that I had to kick over with my foot, then pick up with my hands. That's some stupid crap right there. This wasn't something that was tricky to figure out. Instead of asking me what x+x equals, they just gave me x+x=y except the whole equation was hidden underneath a book. The enjoyment from solving a puzzle isn't there. This wasn't satisfying. It was just frustrating that instead of coming up with a creative solution, they just hid a small, stupid sharp object somewhere on the screen. It was cheap, ineffective, and annoying. Everything a puzzle in an adventure game shouldn't be.

All in all, this was one of the best games I've played in a long time. It raised interesting concepts, it combined game mechanics in an interesting way, and it fell into very few potholes along the way. I really, really enjoyed it, and the disk is going to have a special place on my shelf, and in my mind.

I almost forgot to mention. Noir cop's name? Azriel Odin.

I'm not even joking.